Insomnia, thy name is...

So I'm getting ready to take some time off work. So of course, all things go wrong, and by all things, I mean, my washing machine, which had issues a few weeks ago and I alerted my landlord, who cleaned out a ton of lint. Max, Mr. First Floor, did a load after "lint-gate" and had no problem. My mom was in town last weekend, so we went to a laundromat since I had more laundry than one load. But in preparation for stuff n'at, I wanted to do a load tonight.

I checked on it at 9pm, before I left for Whole Foods. I checked on it at 10, after I returned from Whole Foods. (After I put a phone call into my car friend to say, why would there be water dripping from my passenger side foot area? Oh, condensation from my a/c? Oh, okay.) My mom assured me that we could do laundry tomorrow. I assured her, oh, I'm sure it will spin out soon, and promptly forgot about it, went upstairs to watch Numb3rs and finish packing my meds. At a quarter to midnight, after I had done enough of my own spinning, I figured my laundry should be too.

And I was sorely disappointed.

So I unplugged the stupid vile machine (I think it must be a faulty pump) and took my laundry out, put it in the sink to drain overnight. In the morning, I'll take my trash bag out of my kitchen trash can and use the trash can to transport the drained out laundry.

I discovered this unhappy laundry debacle after I had put my laptop to bed but since I'm so wired I brought it back up, wrote an email to my landlord, and started this post.

ARGH.

North Hills Sally, now Michigan Sally, has discovered her local library and has finally taken out Gilead, one of my favorite books. I told her, it's a love letter from a father to a son, do not expect a plot and know that it meanders.

I am so exhausted. Maybe I'll find an online game to play.

mtc (more to come)

xo,
SL

Insomnia, thy name is PMS...

Today I gave up my Aunt Margaret's table. I lent it to a new friend who has just started renting a house and needed more furniture to fill it up. It was that or let my landlord use it to stack his golf clubs. (Well, we would have found a family member to house it, but new friend, let's see, we'll call her Margaret, for Margaret's table is now hers.)

My Aunt Margaret got married, eloped, when she was fifty. She married a judge from the office where she was a secretary. Their "meet cute" had something to do with baseball tickets. To the Mets, I thought, but someone said the Mets weren't around then. Aunt Margaret was a career girl in the twenties and thirties. I guess she got married in the late forties, as she was born in 1898. (You do the math, I'm too tired.) It is a family mystery as to why she married him. Maybe he made her laugh, muses my mother. All my mother remembers is that he was old. But he bought Aunt Margaret a pig, (she wanted one) and when she was widowed, Margaret made it possible for my mom to go to camp two weeks in a row one summer. She bought everyone magazine subscriptions, and took us to see "Hello Dolly" one summer, on Broadway. My grandmother, (not Margaret's sister in law, but my dad's mom, who was friends with Margaret through some club, not because my mom married my dad) bought me soundtracks to every play I'd seen. I still have all of them, even though I haven't played vinyl for years.

I love sitting here and discovering what will come out. It's like no other kind of writing. When I journal, it's generally because I have to work something out. When I write a letter, it's to a specific "Dear you." When I write a cover letter (let's not talk about it) I freeze until I get to the second draft that has been doctored by Kiki (dear dear Kiki). But when I come here, and I'm in the right place, the writing just comes.

Of course, as soon as I write a sentence like that, the flow stops. In the background, I'm listening to the commentary with version of the season finale of Season Five. So I stop every now and then to turn back to the TV behind me. What I love about the commentary for this particular episode is that Michael Patrick King doesn't talk over the dialogue, as he often does in other commentary episodes, especially one with Berger in Season Six. (But we won't get into that here.) I had lunch with a dear one this week, Kay. And she and I are the type of friends that will never run out of things to talk about. On Tuesday, at Mad Mex, we could not stop talking about SATC. We know all the episodes by heart and love them all--and agree that a good show is one that can be better by talking about it with friends.

Well, my neck is getting tired enough that maybe my body can be tired enough and I can sleep. Tomorrow--Sandcastle. It is my favorite day of every summer. My friend K. and I have been going for the past three years. I've gone for the past five. But I'm too tired to write more...maybe sleep will come...

Insomnia...thy name is...I give up.

#87 why I don't like DVDs: if you put one in and fall asleep, you will inevitably wake up to the stupid menu music.

And someone has "requested" to follow me on Twitter. I think I know them, since they are following people I know, but I don't know who they are. (WHY do people choose bizarre nom de plums?) (Kettle? Hello, you're black.) (But at least I have my first name attached to my Twitter account...) GAH. I also have accepted a FB friend who is friends with one person I know...

Oh, and I dropped (not on purpose) (so I guess that would be "knocked over") a glass of red wine last night and am STILL finding how far it reached. GAH.

Oh, had an absolute ball at the last SRC committee meeting. Laughed until I sort of had tears. We all revealed a deep dark secret and mine was "I want to move to New York." The rest just came out and they were super supportive and E. knows someone who already works for QBPL!!!
The ELib meeting was great, but when I got home, my introvert sirens were at high pitch. Oh, and I finally reconnected my camera and my computer, but the software is different, fun. One fascinating thing--each day of pictures gets its own folder. Which could be sort of helpful, except that it was 280 pictures.

Okay, Kate Hudson in the VCR (not DVD), let's try to drift off, shall we? Why didn't I buy the eye shades when Target had them for $1? Cuz I can't find the one that came with the nightgown mom bought me for Christmas. (I used to always think those things were ridiculous, but once I got one, oy, just wonderful.)

Oh, and I may have already received my stimulus payment, b/c it would have been/will be deposited direct as this is how I got my tax refund. I'm earmarking it towards "interview expenses." K. interviewed a few years ago at Queens and turned them down, Pittsburgh being more affordable--they all want to visit me when I move. And the cover letter/resume goes off THIS WEEK. Because otherwise I'm just spitting into the wind or something. Say a prayer...I am a little petrified.

Last night explained SuperPoke to two folks at ELib meeting. I said, it is how my sister communicates with me. She sent me a pig dressed up as Princess Leia for Star Wars Day (May the Fourth Force be with you.) I didn't know anyone knew about that except everyone that knows my dad, but hey...it made MY day. Cuz I had forgotten it was May the Fourth, you know, Pens game and all.

Okay, let's see if I can get a little more sleep.

insomnia, thy name is...New York?

So, um, yins might have found that I have a fascination with the Big Apple.

And you might remember last year I wanted to move closer to my family, partly due to the fact that Pittsburgh keeps slamming its brown gray doors in my face (or so it seems.)

I dunno.

I'll keep you posted.

(A certain large library in NYC is hiring)

Just finished Sara Zarr's Sweethearts, omg, this book is AMAZING. So raw, so real, so exactly the kind of book I've always wanted to read, therefore write.

And when I came online, trying to quell the last bit of book sobs, a college friend had "friended" me on FB, a woman that I lost touch with eons ago.

Emo? Me? Nah!

Anyways, sleep tight!

Insomnia, thy name is...

Would you believe for the SECOND day in a row I screwed up my meds? You better believe I have them set out correctly and in their holder already for tomorrow morning. I even (gasp!) have clothes set out--I honestly cannot remember the last time I did that.

My mom may or may not call me at 7am--either way, my alarm is set, and I warned her that I'd call her if she didn't call me (my dad is still in NYC, no word on how the trial went.)

I started at dinner and finished just now a book called These Boots Weren't Made For Walking. Which was a fun romp and actually my only bone to pick is why in all the Christian romance novels the guys who start out as Christian are geeky, or cheaters, or boring, and the girl always ends up with the scruffy guy who wasn't a Christian at the beginning of the book, but is now? And the end was a little too over the edge, but romantic, yes.

Is it any wonder those of us Christian gals that are still single risk the risk of dating non-Christians? (Not that I base my life on Christian romance novels, but...I've been reading Grace Livingston Hill since high school.)

What happened to the robust Christian man? I still haven't finished Why men hate going to church, but the fact that such a book (which is full of well backed research and was written by a layman, not an author looking for a cute idea.)

WSJ is not easy to find online, but here's an excerpt from an article my dad emailed me (WEEKEND JOURNAL; Taste -- de gustibus -- Elaine and Puddy: A MatchMade on Earth by Naomi Schaefer Riley, Wall Street Journal: September 14, 2007):

For evangelicals who want to pair up with others of the same faith butdon't
manage to do so in their early 20s, trouble lies ahead,particularly for women.
Evangelical churches now typically have a 60-40 split between women and men,
which means that there are many moresingle evangelical women out there than
their male counterparts. AsMs. Cockrel explains, "I have friends who wanted to
marry a Christianguy, are still single, and are more and more open to dating
non-Christians as they get older. They're tired of waiting."

Oh anyways. I'm going to put in some M*A*S*H and hope it lulls me to sleep. Or maybe something less engaging. Anyways, I need sleep. I hope to find SOMETHING that will get me there.

I have an appointment with a lawyer on Monday to see if I can get somewhere with the car fiasco.

It's raining here. Before that, it was windy windy windy.

My bosses both were boosts in the arm today, M with her wisdom concerning "call the lawyer--don't bother calling the dealership again!" and E with my year end review--I was pleased to see where I got 3's (Exceeds Standards). M also passed on a nugget that someone else might have passed on but I didn't catch until today: Max's decision to break up with me the day of his surgery might have had more to do with the fact that he realized things would come up that he couldn't protect me from, and/or things would come up that I couldn't protect him from. So he pulled away to protect us both. Which makes sense. And since I doubt highly Mr. First Floor will ever speak to me again (oh, yes, the drama queen emerges), this seems the most beautiful way of putting it, and it makes sense, based on the information I know about us and about me and about how him and how we both acted in the relationship.

*sigh*